Election Day Stories and 100th Post!

It's election day! Can you feel the excitement? I can!

Recently, Bev at How Sweet the Sound posed an interesting question. She asked "In which national election did you first vote?" This was a great question for me, because I didn't have such an easy time getting to vote! Here was my comment in answer to her question, with some elaboration on my original answer:

"What a great question! I was so annoyed that I fell just 6 weeks short of being able to vote in 1976 because I was not quite 18. So I had to wait four more years to vote in 1980! The election was between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. I was living in Pittsburgh at the time, and I was 8 months pregnant with my daughter. I had moved to a different apartment shortly before the election, but had registered to vote in my new location. I walked my pregnant self quite a ways to the new polling place, but when I got there, they said I wasn't listed to vote there! I then walked all the way back to my old polling place in my old neighborhood. They said I wasn't registered there either. I would NOT be daunted as I really, really wanted to vote for a president! I called the election board, and they had somehow typed in my address wrong, putting down Pennsylvania Avenue instead of Penn Avenue! That was way on the other side of the city! There was no way I could walk there."



"I had to wait for them to actually take documents to the courthouse and have a judge rule that I could vote at my new polling place. I returned home to wait on the phone call. By this time, Jimmy Carter was clearly losing, and my boyfriend told me that I was wasting my time. I didn't care. I still wanted to cast my vote for Jimmy. Finally, an hour before the polls closed, they called, and I went back to vote. It felt so good!"



I haven't missed voting in a presidential election since then. In fact, I have missed very few elections of any sort. It's easy to take the right to vote for granted. Sometimes it takes pictures like the one below to remember that even in recent history, people in other countries in this world are not always able to vote. Here is a woman in Iran exercising her right to vote, possibly for the first time.



Even in the United States and Britain, women had to fight for the right to vote. It was not easy for the Suffragettes. They were imprisoned and force fed when they went on hunger strikes. By today's standards, the treatment they received would be considered torture.




I feel blessed that these women fought for my right to vote!

Here is another election story. Having a presidential candidate come to visit my town isn't exactly new to me. It was a first in many years for the city I currently live in, but another candidate visited my hometown in 1996. Republican Bob Dole decided to visit the year he ran against Democrat Bill Clinton. A local historian found out that Dole had some local roots, and that a distant relative was buried in an old cemetery. At the time, my father was mayor, and local officials asked him to come to a breakfast in Dole's honor and give him the key to the city.

My father, being a very staunch Democrat, was unhappy with this proposal. He griped that he wasn't for Dole, so why should he meet up with him? I told my dad that this was an honor and a pretty cool thing even if he wasn't for Dole, and that he should go and smile and give Dole the key to the city. Dad was concerned though. What on earth would a small town mayor have to talk about with a senator and presidential candidate? I told him that for heaven's sake, they were the same age, had both served in World War II and had grandchildren, so what wouldn't they have to talk about? I also told him to remember that under all those titles, he was just a man and human.

Later that day I asked Dad how the breakfast went. A huge grin spread across his face. He had sat right next to him! In typical Dad fashion, he said, "I loved him! He was the kind of guy I would love to have as a friend. I would love to have him as a neighbor...I'm just not going to vote for him." He had a great time talking with him. He was so glad that I encouraged him to go meet Bob Dole.

Although Dole didn't win the election, he gained some noteriety afterward. Remember the Viagra ads? I think he showed a lot of courage by being the spokesperson for this product. It's not just any man that can get on national television and confess that he couldn't get his willy up! I think he used this in a positive way though.



If you haven't got out there and voted yet today, what are you waiting for? Log off and get out there!


Hopefully you've read down this far. This is my 100th post. Unfortunately, I am not able to do a giveaway right now. This will have to wait for a while. However, I am going to borrow an idea from Rue (Heather) at Rue's Peanut Butter and Jelly Life. Here is the deal, you can ask me any question you want and I will answer it in a future post. You can either email me or you can leave a question in my comment box.

Let the fun begin!

McCain Comes to my Town

There was a pretty exciting event in my town here in northwest Ohio this past Thursday! This was the first time that a presidential candidate came to speak in my city since Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was quite an honor for the town!

Let me first say that John McCain is not my candidate. This does not take away from the fact that this was something very special for my town, and I am reporting about the impact of the rally on myself and the city. Anything I say would have been the same if it had been Obama who visited. I will not entertain any criticism of my choice of candidate, nor will I allow any political quarrels on my blog. I saw that happen on another person's blog, and I am just not going there. If you want to debate who is the best candidate, then take that to a forum made for that. Freedom of speech is a very good thing, but my blog isn't about politics. Therefore, I am moderating comments for this post.

That being said, let's get on with the story!

Last week, the paper announced that we would have a presidential candidate come to our city and make a speech! I don't know why my town was chosen, but everyone was buzzing with excitement. This seemed to be something very last minute, so everything had to be put into place very quickly. I can say that my city rose to the occasion and handled everything very well. Tickets were given away at area Republican headquarters. A location was chosen. Not sure how they decided our middle school, which is located on a state route in a residential area and very near the downtown was chosen, but that's where they decided to hold the rally! I really do think that it would have been better to have him speak out at the mall or at the college or high school football stadium. There really was no place to park around the school!

The morning before, big semi trucks full of equipment were parked on the road and on the school grounds and they were already unloading equipment. These pictures are not mine, but were found online and in the local newspaper. One of the photographers is named Amy McCarty, another is Jim Schoch. I want to give credit where it is possible.



Secret Service men were casing our town and the schools days in advance. They even went to all the homes surrounding the school and searched the homes, making sure there were no weapons present. While I understand the need for safety, I don't think I would like the government coming into my home like that.

The day of the rally, people were lining up as early as 7:00 a.m. McCain was not scheduled to speak until 10:00 a.m. We had low temps that night, and I woke up to 24 degrees with a hard frost on the ground. I heard from someone at work who was granted a press pass, that all press had to be present at 5:00 a.m. to meet with the Secret Service and to get security clearance. He said that the stages that had been set up the night before were as slick as ice from the frost!



The entire student body attended the rally. There are about 1000 high school students alone! They all had to go through security and metal detectors. I saw some comments in forums that criticized the district for sending their students, but no one was forced to go. They were allowed to stay home at their parents' request or high schoolers could stay at the school. I agreed with the superintendent who said that despite your political party, this should be seen as an historic event that students actually had a chance to be a part of. I think its a great lesson to be part of the political process! I told my son to be respectful and be a good representative of his high school. Some students from other districts in the county attended as well.

I did not get to attend the rally. I had to work, and I had a group to facilitate at the same time McCain was scheduled to speak. I gave myself plenty of time to get to work in case traffic was tied up. The rally was only 3 blocks from my workplace. I had no trouble getting to work, but there were no parking spaces in our lot! People from the rally ignored our signs and parked there anyhow. I had to drive around searching for someplace to park, and finally found one 4 blocks away. What is so ironic is that it was less than half a block from the rally! I was very close to the rally and could see parts of it, and could hear the school bands playing. I really was very strongly tempted to skip work and check out the excitement!

Here is another pic of the rally. Can you see the snipers on top of the building at the right side? That flag was really big, probably two stories tall! They had to hang it from a crane.


Here is another view of the flag. Beautiful! This is one of the photos by Ms. McCarthy.


Although they gave away over 9000 tickets, they estimated that only 6000 were in attendance. My guess is that it was too cold for some people. Or maybe they couldn't find a parking space. Heh.


As at any rally, there were representatives from the opposing party. There was a person walking around downtown selling both Obama and McCain t-shirts! I guess his political affiliation was with the "Just Make Money" party.


McCain, his wife Cindy, and their daughter (not picture) arrived and he spoke for about 20 minutes. City and county leaders had spoken before he got there.





I thought that it was pretty great that such a positive spotlight was on our town that day. My city was described in the media as "picturesque."

Just to set a couple things straight. McCain called out for Joe the Plumber during his speech, and to his embarrassment, Joe wasn't there. There was a big hullabaloo about being stood up by Joe the Plumber, but that wasn't the case at all. Joe wanted to be there and had been contacted by McCain's organizers, but then they failed to call him back to make final arrangements. Then his organizers forgot to tell McCain. He really did want to be there and did NOT stand up the candidate. In fact, he was picked up by staffers later that day and was with McCain for his second speech of the day. McCain spoke in at least 3 Ohio cities on Thursday.

Don't forget to vote Tuesday!